18/4/05

Gerhard Richter 858

The Seattle-based jazz composer and instrumentalist, Bill Frisell, has released a new album entitled Richter 858, inspired by a group of eight abstract paintings by German artist, Gerhard Richter. He has accompanied each of the paintings with its own composition of music, which can be played in the form of a CD-rom slide show. Frisell first saw Richter's paintings at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and worked rapidly to create the album in about ten hours. Frisell succeeds in developing this new genre that is profoundly reflective and innovative - as are Richter's works themselves. It is also recognised that Richter himself usually works to music. The composition of the music harmonises naturally with the extraordinary range of sounds required, creating total compatibility with the paintings. The new production by Frisell is distributed by Songlines Recordings.